{"id":1547,"date":"2018-01-21T22:55:02","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T22:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2018-01-21T22:55:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T22:55:02","slug":"propwatch-the-letters-in-hamilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/01\/propwatch-the-letters-in-hamilton.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the letters in Hamilton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For a show that might reshape the musical for the 21st century, there\u2019s an awful lot of paper in Hamilton<\/a>.<\/em> The stage is a flurry of letters, ledgers, leaves and broadsides \u2013 it\u2019s almost antiquated. Hamilton<\/em> has sui generis swagger and the sound of something new, but it\u2019s a story about what is written, what is read. It\u2019s a show built on pen scratching furiously over paper.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the mensch of all our hearts, introduced a song from what was then a proposed concept album, saying Hamilton’s significance<\/a> was in \u2018the strength of his writing – he embodies the word’s ability to make a difference.\u2019 As album grew into an all-consuming production, the act of writing remained integral: papers pass incessantly from hand to hand at high speed during the production. Alexander Hamilton \u2013 founding father, unsatisfied soul \u2013 scribbles policy, persuasion, passion and pique, to win a fight, woo a wife. He writes lofty, in the constitution; he writes low, to slap an enemy. He keeps records of slights and cheque stubs. In song, he\u2019s a whirring wordsmith, but Miranda also makes him a slave to the pen.<\/p>\n

Marks of heart and brain<\/strong><\/p>\n

Print engineered ideas during the revolutionary pamphlet wars. But what we see is handwritten \u2013 the mark of heart and brain on paper, issuing in the heat of the moment. People don\u2019t waggle booklets, but scatter single sheets or pass them around like love letters. It keeps everything intimate, everything the issue of Hamilton\u2019s teeming brain. He\u2019s Washington\u2019s writing-hand man, and even policy feels personal, a beef with Burr or Jefferson. Scribble, scribble, Mr Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Spend an afternoon on pinterest, and you\u2019ll see how Ham fans embrace this motif. Key lyrics are calligraphed on sepia backgrounds. They identify how everything in this show comes from and goes directly to the heart. None more so than in the myriad versions of the letter Hamilton sends to Angelica, the woman he might have married \u2013 addressed to not \u2018My dearest Angelica\u2019 but \u2018My dearest, Angelica\u2019<\/a>. The comma speaks volumes, cracks open an unspoken love. \u2018One stroke and you\u2019ve consumed my waking days,\u2019 she sings. Fans feel how that tiny mark on paper changes everything.<\/p>\n

A highlight of a recent visit to the RSC\u2019s props workshop<\/a> was the \u2018soft props\u2019 corner, where paper becomes stageworthy. The level of detail was boggling \u2013 lovingly researched Victorian railway timetables or papal encyclical (Hilary Mantel had sent a letter of appreciation for Wolf Hall<\/em>\u2019s accurate documents). I was sat too far away to see if Hamilton<\/em>\u2019s papercraft followed suit: are these blank sheets, printed or penned (anyone who knows, please tell)?<\/p>\n

Make way for the words<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is it heretical to wonder what a more assertive production of Hamilton<\/em> might look like? Whatever you feel about 1980s behemoths by Lloyd Webber, Sch\u00f6nberg and Boublil, these productions rippled far beyond musical theatre. Trevor Nunn, Hal Prince, Nicholas Hytner and their design teams stamped emblematic images (chandelier, helicopter) on spectators\u2019 brains; their choreographers, notably Gillian Lynne, turned movement into meaning. Filched from the bolder end of classical theatre, the style fed back into it tenfold. Mainstream Shakespeare, international opera, keen studio work were all transformed. A space dominated by a single theme- and story-telling element, hardwired with movement, became a prevailing style.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s none of that in Thomas Kail\u2019s production of Hamilton.<\/em> It makes way for the words \u2013 I\u2019ve rarely listened so hard, so happily during a show. We mostly see someone standing centre stage, spinning fleet phrases and spitting puns, a twine of rhyme that keeps pulsing forward. What\u2019s a director to do but ensure that nothing distracts? A polite timber set is reminiscent of the RSC\u2019s duller history plays; sharp choreography is tightly confined \u2013 ripples and rucks that won\u2019t pull focus.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a staging of more invention would blow our tiny minds \u2013 it\u2019s already hyperbolically exciting. As it is, paper fits right in. Audiences cherish this unlikely story as contemporary \u2013 we feel the zeal, we miss it in our public discourse. Miranda shows us our current moment, even as we see the first draft of history. It\u2019s a reminder that history is process, never inevitable. It\u2019s written, maybe forgotten, then rediscovered, like a pile of papers at the back of a drawer, personal to the writer and the eventual reader. No wonder we love Hamilton. Scribble, scribble.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a show that might reshape the musical for the 21st century, there\u2019s an awful lot of paper in Hamilton. The stage is a flurry of letters, ledgers, leaves and broadsides \u2013 it\u2019s almost antiquated. Hamilton has sui generis swagger and the sound of something new, but it\u2019s a story about what is written, what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,322,321,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-musicals","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-theatre","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}